The Death of the Prophet and the Sirah's Enduring Legacy

The Sirat Ibn Hisham reaches its most solemn passage in its account of the Prophet's final illness and death in the eleventh year of the Hijra. The illness began shortly after the Farewell Pilgrimage, initially manifesting as fever and headaches. The Prophet, who had always taken an active role in leading his community's prayers, attempted to continue his normal routine for as long as possible. As the illness progressed and the effort of movement became clearly painful, he asked the permission of his wives to remain in the apartment of Aisha bint Abi Bakr — the room in which he had built his beloved wife's residence adjacent to the mosque — and it was granted.

In his final days, the Prophet appointed Abu Bakr al-Siddiq to lead the prayers. This appointment carried enormous significance in a community that had no formal mechanism for succession — it was widely understood as a signal of the Prophet's confidence in Abu Bakr as the leader most qualified to guide the community after his death. There was an episode recorded in the seerah in which the Prophet emerged from his apartment, supported by two Companions, clearly weakened by illness, to observe the congregation at prayer. He saw Abu Bakr leading, and the narrations report that he smiled at the sight. The Companions who saw that smile would remember it as one of their last images of him in health enough to move freely.

On the morning of his death — reported as Monday, the twelfth of Rabi' al-Awwal, 11 AH, in the apartment of Aisha — the Prophet had a brief window of apparent improvement. He opened the curtain between his room and the mosque, saw Abu Bakr leading the prayer, smiled, and then returned inside. The Companions in the mosque, seeing his face briefly, were overcome with joy thinking he had recovered enough to return. Abu Bakr, who had sensed differently, nearly broke from the prayer and was only stopped by the Prophet's gesture. When the prayer ended and the Companions began to move toward the Prophet's apartment with relief and hope, the news came: he had returned to Allah.

Ibn Hisham's account of the community's reaction is among the most emotionally compelling passages in Islamic historical literature. Umar ibn al-Khattab, a man of iron will who had faced battle without flinching, stood outside with his sword drawn, declaring that anyone who said the Prophet had died was a liar — he had merely gone to his Lord as Moses had gone and would return. This was not performance. Umar's denial was the expression of a grief too great to accept. It took Abu Bakr's calm and extraordinary composure to break through: he entered the apartment, kissed the forehead of the Prophet whose face had become luminous even in death, then came to the mosque and addressed the community: 'Whoever among you worshipped Muhammad, Muhammad has died. Whoever worshipped Allah, Allah is Ever-Living, who does not die.' He then recited the verse: 'Muhammad is not but a messenger. Messengers have passed on before him. So if he were to die or be killed, would you turn back on your heels?' (3:144). Umar later said that when he heard that verse, his legs gave way and he fell to the ground — it was as though he had not known it existed until that moment.

The Prophet was buried in the spot where he died, in the apartment of Aisha. The decision was based on a statement of Abu Bakr that he had heard from the Prophet: prophets are buried where they die. The grave thus remained within what became, in subsequent centuries, the Masjid al-Nabawi — the Prophet's Mosque — where it has been visited by Muslims across the world ever since.

The broader significance of Ibn Hisham's seerah, as a literary and historical monument, rests on several dimensions that become clearest in retrospect. As a source, it is the most complete and carefully organized narrative of the prophetic biography to survive from the early centuries of Islam. The care with which Ibn Hisham selected, organized, and annotated Ibn Ishaq's material means that the seerah presents not merely raw historical data but a curated and intellectually shaped narrative — one that reflects the values and priorities of the early Muslim scholarly community. What Ibn Hisham chose to include, and what he tells us he excluded, reveals as much about early Muslim self-understanding as the content of the narrative itself.

Every major subsequent work of Seerah literature depends on the Sirat Ibn Hisham as a primary source. Ibn Kathir's Al-seerah al-Nabawiyyah, al-Tabari's Tarikh, al-Suhayli's Al-Rawd al-Unuf (a commentary on the seerah), and in modern times al-Mubarakpuri's Ar-Rahiq al-Makhtum all draw on Ibn Hisham. Studying it is therefore not merely an introduction to one book but an introduction to the entire tradition of prophetic biography. For the Muslim reader, the function of the seerah goes beyond historical information. The scholars have consistently taught that reading and knowing the Prophet's biography is an act of religious significance — that loving the Prophet requires knowing him, and knowing him requires engaging with the record of his life. Ibn Hisham's text, by preserving and organizing that record with scholarly care, created the foundational document through which Muslim communities across the world have come to know the man whose character the Quran described as of tremendous moral excellence and whose life remains the most studied in human history.